The smartphone generation

Taking selfies and photos of each other is something you see everywhere in the world. In India, we especially noticed many people who insisted on being on the photo together with us, or especially with Elize. In Bangkok, a selfie is taken on every corner of the street at every minute of the day. And the same we did witness in Myanmar. The population is remarkably young and every single self-respecting person is having a smartphone.

Number one occupation what to do with it? Taking photos of themselves or each other. The people visiting the flower festival and botanical garden in Pwin Oo Lyin take it very seriously. Young girls taking selfies every 10 meters they walk, people having two phones: one to call, the other to take photos. The flower festival did have a special photo wall created for all selfie and portraits adepts. As if many people don’t have many photos of themselves yet, it was a very popular and crowded spot in the large park.

As Elize did already mention before, people seem to be more obsessed with taking photos of their pretty faces. Not a single one we did see someone taking special attention to the flowers. No one taking a close-up look to the beautifully crafted flower construction. The smartphone generation seems to become a very ego-centric generation.

While taking a rest on the side of an open space of the park I started taking counting the selfies and making photos of them while drinking our tea. During those 10 minutes of relaxation, I took a staggering 50 photos of people posing, clicking, watching the screen. And that wasn’t even half of what we did see on that moment.

Many photo moments

While taking all these selfies is not necessarily harmful, the lack of attention to other people and the surrounding is for sure. Not as bad (yet) as in India, I was many times disgusted and disappointed by the amount of trash being thrown on the ground without any regard for the surrounding.